AllType for Font Conversion by Collette McManus AllType, The Universal Typeface Converter; Atech Software; $49.99 at Egghead DOS System Requirements: IBM compatible PC with a hard disk and one floppy disk drive, DOS 3.1 or higher and 640K RAM. Windows System Requirements: 286 class PC or above running Windows 3.0 or higher with 1 meg of RAM. Storage Requirements: DOS version requires 1.3 megs of free hard drive space. Windows requires 2 megs of free hard drive space. Optional Intel math co-processors are supported. Applications Supported: Atech Publisher's Powerpak and FastFonts, Adobe Type Manager, Type Align and Illustrator, Ami Pro, Aldus PageMaker, Microsoft Word, Works, and Excel, WordPerfect, Ventura Publisher (GEM), CorelDraw!, Express Publisher, Micrografx Draw and Designer, HP Type Director, ZSoft SoftType, Lotus 123 and all Microsoft Windows applications. Formats Supported: Microsoft TrueType, Adobe PostScript Type 1 and 3, DTC Nimbus Q, Atech FastFont, Agfa Compugraphic Intellifont, Bitstream Fontware and GeoWorks Ensemble. Do you use fonts? If you do any printing from your computer, you use fonts. Do you sometimes use DOS and Windows applications? Do you have Bitstream's Facelift, Atech's Publisher's Powerpak, LaserTools' Fonts-on-the-Fly, AND Adobe Type Manager? One problem is that each of those packages has its own font format which is incompatible with the font format of the other packages. Another problem is that each package has its own version of Times, Helvetica, and other fonts. If you have more than one package, you will most likely also have more than one version of the same or similar fonts. These duplicate fonts take up valuable hard drive space. At a WPSIG meeting, I discussed this with John Wager. He suggested that I buy AllType, a type converter. After checking it out at my local Egghead, I bought it. AllType's features include the ability to convert any font with any scalable font manger, printer, or application with built in scalable fonts. You will have the ability to create hundreds of variations of your original typeface with custom styles and widths (bold, italic, bold italic, hollow, condensed, expanded, thin, wide, and combinations of these styles). You can adjust the angle up to 45 degrees, and change pitch, leading, and/or weight from zero to 999 percent of the original point size of any typeface. You can rename your typefaces as you wish. The converted fonts will be automatically installed into supported applications. AllType retains font "hinting" data for high quality printer output. Both Windows and DOS interfaces are included. Also included are two type families, Aurora and Memo (both sans serif faces). The only conversion drawback seems to be that other typeface formats may not be converted into Bitstream format. AllType is easy to install and very easy to use. The interface is so intuitive, you probably won't even need to read the manual. You just select the font formats, font directories, and mark the fonts to be converted (source information on the left and destination information on the right). You can use the Tab key to move from section to section, or use hot-keys, which are listed in each section. You have the option to change a font's style during conversion. This means you can take a roman style font and make it italic, outline, condensed, and more. On my very slow 286, it can sometimes take a long time to convert a font. Twenty-five minutes is not uncommon. Once I wanted to convert eight fonts all at once. An AllType prompt told me this would take three hours, so I went out and did my Saturday errands. The same prompt that informs you of the time it will take to complete your conversion also tells you the amount of disk space the conversion will need for completion. AllType supports conversion between a wide variety of type formats and application type formats. Type formats are: Atech Fast Fonts, Adobe PostScript Type 1, Adobe PostScript Type 3, Agfa Intellifont FAIS, HP LaserJet II, Nimbus Q, Royal URW, and TrueType. Application type formats are: Adobe Type Manager PostScript Type 1, Avagio (FastFont), Avery LabelPro (FastFont), Chain of Command (FastFont), CorelDraw! ((PostScript Type 1), Express Publisher (Intellifont FAIS), FastFonts (FastFonts), Freedom of Press (PostScript Type 1), GeoWorks Ensemble (GeoWorks), HP Type Director (Intellifont), PerForm (Intellifont), PFS Write (FastFont), Publisher's Powerpak (FastFont), SoftType (URW), Spinnaker Format (FNT), Tandy Deskmate 3.05 (FastFont), Windows 3.1 (TrueType), and Word Publisher (Spinnaker). As I said in last February's Hard-Copy review, I use PrimeType by LaserTools as my WordPerfect fontmanager. My most common use of AllType is to translate Shareware fonts that I can only find in another format into "my" format. Using AllType, I have the ability to use virtually any font I find. For Christmas I found a font with snow on top of the letters . . . it was a TrueType font. I converted it to ATM format (Adobe Type Manager format). Using WordPerfect, PrimeType for WordPerfect and my DeskJet, I made some great Christmas labels for my cards and presents. I have been warned that not all fonts convert well, that sometimes the character width tables don't convert properly. I must be lucky, because so far all my font conversions have yielded fonts that have worked perfectly. By using AllType and PrimeType to manage my fonts and font usage, I have maximized my font potential and minimized my disk space usage. Take it from a true font junkie, I'm very happy with AllType and have since thanked John for his suggestion.